Across the multi-colored live broadcast interfaces suspended over the entire vault of the Blue Planet, the next slot to appear displayed no username, nor did it feature any avatar. When Fengxi's countdown expired, nothing remained upon the screen except a sheet of the absolute, purest black . She had demanded neither world-spanning riches nor mountains of stockpiled grain; she desired only for her grandmother to awaken . Amidst the total stillness of the sacred system, her unalloyed, karmic intent charged directly into the matrix, settling her sequence, before she silently withdrew from the current update queue .
Immediately afterward, the adjacent frame flickered to life . A stray Golden Retriever from a foreign courtyard stepped onto the virtual high platform . It did not ask for premium meats; it simply looked up into the grey banks of clouds . The system translated its most primitive thoughts directly into global subtitles :
[Live Registration: Case No. 4,921,084. I want my master's little iron box to move again. Ever since those metal cases stopped making their clicking sounds, master has never smiled again.]
Before the military commands of the human nations could even log this sudden change, the entire queuing sequence completely fractured in an instant . A cat from a northern port wished for the local heating grid to roar back to life because its owner's fingers were already turning blue from the cold; a draft horse from a southern farm pleaded for the tractor to recover the logic of its internal combustion engine so that the aging farmer would no longer have to pull that heavy iron plow by hand . One followed another . Thousands upon thousands of animals—they did not demand the blood of humanity, nor did they ask for the lives of their abusers . They lined up and raised their heads; their solitary desire was actually to beg The Great Beast God to rescind the "Physical Logic Collapse" that had descended upon their owners' nations .
The interface changed . For the first time since this global trial commenced, the majestic phantom silhouette that sat high upon the sovereign seat truly manifested before the eyes of all . This supreme master of all souls, capable of crushing carrier fleets and stripping away the capital of billionaire syndicates in a heartbeat, leaned forward ever so slightly . This time, Her voice did not shatter mountains or rivers . It was a sound exceptionally quiet and frigid, yet one that bypassed every electronic speaker on the Blue Planet to strike directly within the cerebral cortex of every living thing :
"Thou hast a wish; thou mayest speak it to Me. I listen to all . If I have miscalculated the balance of karma, I shall amend it ."
BOOM .
Responding to Her was an unstoppable, karmic countercurrent unleashed simultaneously by millions of animals . Countless spiritual entities of stray animals across the five continents voluntarily relinquished their absolute right of retributive vengeance—the right to flay human flesh and swap their respective stations of life . They preferred to surrender the high-dimensional karmic points they had accumulated with their own blood and tears just to purchase back electricity, the gravitational constant, and the ignition sparks of internal combustion engines for the humans who had caged them, abandoned them, and even harmed them .
At that exact instant, the giant screens across the global skies fractured simultaneously . It was not an explosion in the physical sense . The multi-colored divine light across the heavens splintered into hundreds of millions of silver particles—the lost physical logic puzzles of the Blue Planet . These puzzles converged into great, silver rivers of stars that spanned the firmament, beginning to flow backward in a manic countercurrent, flying back into the deep reaches of the Divine Realm .
Mortals could perceive none of this . In the eyes of the billions of humans kneeling on the ground, this global broadcast room that had terrified them for days merely flickered twice—like an old television set suddenly cut off from power—before turning entirely pitch-black and extinguishing .
Yet in the high-dimensional depths invisible to ordinary eyes, right at the center of the supreme temple, the gargantuan karmic weight of hundreds of millions of "forgivenesses" and "rescindments" slammed entirely down upon the obsidian throne .
The Great Beast God rose to Her full height . As She stood, Her fair paws clamped down hard upon the obsidian seat . The seemingly soft pads exploded with a terrifying divine force, instantly shattering the solid armrests into splinters . Then, a low growl seeped from Her throat, and a strand of iridescent divine blood brimming with raw power spilled from Her exquisite lips, dripping onto Her snow-white robes .
Sentient beings everywhere were secretly rejoicing in wild ecstasy over the retreat of the divine phenomenon . Yet none knew that the rules of karma demanded an ultimate anchor . When those fragile small animals chose to waive the debts of sinners for the sake of human tomorrow, the foul miasma and unjust blood-debts accumulated across this planet for thousands of years did not simply vanish into thin air .
The laws flowed backward, transforming into a high-dimensional heavy hammer that slammed ruthlessly into the very marrow of Her bones as the Primordial God . She opened Her eyes and looked through the water mirrors, watching the silver puzzles flying back through the skies to submerge straight into the void of the Divine Realm . Within Her golden vertical pupils, there was neither thunder nor fury .
There was only a silence that ran infinitely deep—the look of an absolute, bottomless exhaustion .
It was like an ancient patriarch standing beneath a collapsing timber house, watching his ungrateful, disobedient, and thieving children steal wood to burn fires, yet still using his own spine to death-grip and hold up the crushing roof for them .
The Great Beast God averted Her gaze, no longer looking into the Karmic Pool where mortals were already popping champagne to celebrate the ignition of their machines . Her voice was as faint as a dying breath, echoing through the deathly stillness of the grey palace hall :
"Was I... mistaken about the laws of this realm?"
In a single heartbeat, the celestial light radiating from Her frame dimmed by an entire magnitude . Within that previously sacred hall, a suffocating, unbreakable stench of rust and fresh blood abruptly flooded the air . The Goddess was bleeding Her own foundation and life essence to forcibly preserve those fragile animal spirits that had almost dissolved into fireflies ; meanwhile, the old empires of the mortal world were already pulling the ignition cords, preparing to welcome their so-called "scientific victory" with sheer greed .
Ten thousand years of protection had yielded ten thousand arrows piercing Her heart . The very animal spirits that had once nestled in Her embrace and run through the wild mountains were now kneeling before the gallows constructed by mortal hands . They wept, bowing to the starry sky in a display of near-sacred compliance as they begged for mercy for the humans who had once flayed their skin and torn out their tendons .
"The Great Beast God, spare them," they cried. "They already know they were wrong."
"The Great Beast God, slaughter cannot resolve hatred. Your hands should not be stained with mortal blood."
What beautiful vocabulary—mercy, forgiveness, redemption . Yet these words transformed into the sharpest steel needles, driven one by one into the Beast God's spine . For the first time, She harbored a doubt about Her own existence .
The Goddess could endure it, but the Four Symbols under Her command could not .
BOOM—!!
This was not the sound of an explosion, but the crystalline fracturing of space itself as the universe failed to bear the wrath of high-dimensional entities . Across the entire Blue Planet, in every nation, every city, and the living room of every mortal family, the screens capable of receiving low-dimensional signals ignited simultaneously . They were no longer mere screens; they were the forced dimensional projections of high-dimensional space smashing into the three-dimensional world.
On the public plazas of the B.E.N., the giant LED curtains displayed a reversed, crimson sea of blood—the White Tiger sharpening its star-shredding claws . Across the wilderness of the Long Nation, a dark rift split open a hundred miles in the sky, revealing the Azure Loong's vast coils of blue-black scales shimmering through the thunder . The neon lights of Green Pheasant Country's high streets evaporated instantly as the fires exhaled by the Vermilion Bird melted the horizon into a golden line . In the center of the extreme northern seas, the roar of the Black Tortoise manifested as gravitational waves, forcibly depressing the sea level by three hundred meters .
"They are not enraged at humanity," an elderly theological scholar murmured, his face bloodless as he stared up from the Long Nation's Underground Joint Command Center at the crimson energy vortex threatening to shred the firmament . "They are enraged because The Great One—whom they hold in their palms and worship as their faith—is falling into self-doubt for the sake of us ungrateful, backbiting ants."
Mortals always believed that the deities stopped because of fear, or because humanity possessed some weapon of resistance . But at this moment, as the roars of the Four Symbols tore the geomagnetic field to ribbons and satellites fell like raining fireballs, humanity finally saw reality clear: the deities stopped not because they feared .
It was simply because She was exhausted .
"ROAR—!!"
A piercing, razor-sharp roar of a loong exploded directly inside the eardrums of all humanity, a high-dimensional vibration acting straight upon the soul without the medium of air .
It was the Golden Loong . It was the most loyal spear and shield before the Beast God's throne .
The Golden Loong's colossal frame twisted violently within the clouds, every golden scale trembling with extreme fury . It did not look down at the bloodless faces of humanity; instead, it glared deathly at the animals kneeling on the ground, who were attempting to use their own spiritual bodies to shield the humans from divine punishment .
"I have guarded thee for ten thousand eons, only to watch Her suffer the agony of ten thousand arrows piercing Her heart day and night!" The Golden Loong's roar carried a deep, agonized grievance over their stubborn ignorance, a weight so heavy it slammed into the mortal world as a torrential downpour . "With thy flimsy phrase that 'The Great One is mistaken,' thou wishest to erase all Her sacrifices?!"
A polar bear spirit trembled violently, yet it still unfurled its front paws, attempting to block the space before a human ruin that was about to be annihilated by the loong's breath . It wept: "Lord Loong God, slaughter will only bring more destruction. The Great Beast God taught us to love life..."
"Silence! Thou shameless, ignoble beast!"
The Golden Loong roared in absolute fury, its whiskers thrashing violently against the void, tearing open jet-black fissures in the fabric of space . It lunged downward, its colossal head halting a mere hundred meters above the gathering of animal spirits . From its eyes rolled scalding, golden tears of blood .
"I seek justice for thee, yet thou pleaded for thy executioners?!"
The loong's roar caused continental plates to shift; volcanoes erupted simultaneously into the midnight sky, painting the firmament a desperate, crimson dark .
"Are thy lives truly so worthless and cheap?!"
"To grant thee a stray strand of a remnant soul for reincarnation, The Great Beast God preferred to endure the karmic backlash, shattering Her own Godhead into eight shards! Yet here thou art, using the spiritual forms She bestowed upon thee to serve as shields for mortals—the very ones who flayed thy furs for coats and chewed thy flesh at their dining tables?!"
The Golden Loong was driven to madness . It did not seek the wanton destruction of the Blue Planet, but it simply could not comprehend this reality . Why did the most genuine protection of The Great Goddess always reap betrayal—whether from the humans She shielded, or the very kin She rescued?
In the desperate stillness, the perimeters of the holographic screens began to warp and liquefy . The enforcers of judgment, who were supposed to remain on the high-dimensional side of the screen, shattered the physical barriers that mortals could never comprehend .
Clack.
A sharp hoof-beat echoed . It was a monolithic beast, ink-black, its eyes resembling burning, ancient wells . The Sin Seizer. Its colossal frame defied every law of physics, stepping cleanly out from the giant display wall of the B.E.N. public plaza .
Immediately after, the Wealth Devourer (Pixiu), radiating a gluttonous and frigid aura, trampled its way out from an ancient castle mural in a Western nation .
Illusion violently invaded reality .
As the Sin Seizer's barbed tail carved a deep trench several kilometers long across the asphalt road, countless mortals forgot how to flee . The sheer, proximity-based weight of that presence felt as if Mount Everest had been forcibly rammed into their retinas .
As the absolute, rational enforcer of the Karmic Pool, the Sin Seizer's eyes held none of the Golden Loong's emotional grievance . It held only an ultimate, clinical coldness . To It, karma allowed for no compromise .
"Since thou deemest mortals innocent, and since thou wishest to share life and death with thy executioners," the Sin Seizer spoke, its jaw opening slowly, its voice void of any rising or falling cadence—resembling a programmed report detailing the disposal of scrap material , "then I shall sever all thy karma with this planet . From this moment forth, thou shalt no longer enjoy the protection of the Divine Kingdom . Thy cycles of life and death shall be reduced to bottomless code, completely erased ."
It raised a front hoof . The moment that hoof descended, the pleading animal spirits began to disintegrate like scattering sand .
The mortals watched this scene, and absolute terror finally gripped their hearts . They realized that when the Divine Beasts no longer showed mercy even to the animal spirits, the next to be erased would be them—the true perpetrators of sin .
The apocalyptic landscape expanded to its absolute limit . The crimson sea of lightning pressed down to a mere ten meters above the ground . Even the most fortified subterranean bunkers began to disintegrate at a molecular level under the sheer radiation of divine pressure .
Billions of humans closed their eyes, awaiting the fraction of a microsecond that would bring total annihilation .
Yet at that exact instant, from the deepest reaches of the void, a whisper descended—extremely hoarse, carrying a trace of helpless, absolute exhaustion:
"Return."